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Tuesday, 30 September 2008

In my other class, we've been working on a log cabin pattern. It has a yellow or read square in the center, representing the hearth of the log cabin, and then the logs layered around it to look like a log cabin seen from above. Here's my progress from Saturday night:

Here are the pieces laid out in the right order:

You sew one on after the other, turning left in between to align the next seam. It helps to chain-sew them together, saves some thread and gets you a kite-tail like string in the end:

You end up with four of these:

And they can be aligned in oodles of different arrangements:

I settled on this one:since we're only using one block in our sampler quilt. For a big quilt I'd probably use the second last pattern that makes the quilt look like a triangle pattern.

I find quilting really engaging. My cheeks get hot and red because I'm concentrating on my perfect edges. I guess quilting works well with perfectionists, because if you're a millimeter off, in the end it ends up to an 5 cm since there are so many blocks to sew together. I'm especially excited to see the final product of my big double-sized double Irish chain quilt. I can't really picture the final pattern yet.

Next, pick the material, which needs to be washed, dried and ironed but never steamed:

Then we cut it into strips (they're folded up so that I could cut them on my cutting mat):

And lastly - for now - the strips are sewn together according to a detailed plan and with lots of rules to follow.Next class we'll cut the joined strips so that we get short strips with several squares sewn together. Then these smaller strips will be laid out to form a block and sewn together. In the end, all the blocks will be laid out and sewn together and then the quilting part begins.

Thursday, 18 September 2008

I've signed up for community school (10 week courses taught by volunteers)! I'm taking two quilting classes, one in Donagh on Tuesdays and another in Stratford on Wednesdays. There was a long line up in Stratford, but I think pretty much everyone got the class they wanted anyway. I figured if I have to buy materials and cutters and mats and rulers, I may as well take two classes and make it worth it. Plus I wasn't really interested in much of the rest that was on offer in terms of classes.And good thing I signed up for two classes, because already after the first class I noticed that we're getting lots of different tricks and tips about what to do and what not to do in each class!In Donagh, we're all making a full quilt with the same pattern (double Irish chain) but with our own colour choices.

In Stratford, Kathy is teaching us how to make 4 different patterns for a quilt sampler. I will add two extra patterns and make it into a small lap-quilt, because I don't want a useless sampler, I need something functional :) The patterns are: Four Patch, Log Cabin, Bow Tie and Rail Fence. In addition, I'm doing a picture panel with the jungle theme fabric I use and a Friendship Star.